2022 Keynote Speaker – Blake Manley

Blake Manley, Sweet Home High School Natural Resources Teacher, Founder of Manley Jobs, and Chair of Oregon Natural Resources Educators Association will be the keynote speaker at the OLC in February 2022. He will address the OLC on Thursday, February 24^th at 9:30 a.m. in the Wheeler Pavilion (Lane Events Center & Fairgrounds)

Manley grew up in Oregon, graduating from Cove High School in 2000.  He loved teaching and would teach-assist lower-level math classes while attending high school but after taking college math classes, realized that was not his calling. He graduated from University of Idaho in 2008, with a degree in forestry.

After college, Manley worked for the U.S. Forest Service and Sauder Mouldings Inc., before returning home and working for seven years with the family business, Manley Brothers Logging. He also was involved in coaching athletics at Cove High School during that time.

He has been teaching at Sweet Home High School since 2018 and is at the helm of the High School Forestry program.

The “Manley Jobs” series, a natural resources career video project, was born when Manley and Sweet Home High School Principal Ralph Brown came up with the idea of shooting videos with cellphones and a GoPro. However, after the first one, Manley said, “it wasn’t good enough.”

Better equipment was acquired and to date, multiple videos have been done on logging, forestry, truck driving, and other natural resource careers.

This year, Manley partnered with the Oregon Logging Conference and Oregon Logging Conference Foundation to produce two logging-related videos following the cancellation of 2021 OLC due to COVID-19.  The OLC Foundation wanted to do something different for its Future Forestry Workers Career Day, which had been an annual gathering of 700 to 800 students at the Oregon Logging Conference in Eugene to learn about logging-related careers.

Manley said of being selected as the Keynote Speaker at the OLC, “This is a huge honor for me.”

Manley and his wife Miranda have two daughters, Abigail 8, and Eleanor 5, and live in Sweet Home, OR.